In 1999, Seth Godin established the notion of permission marketing, naming a completely different approach to the conventional “interruptive marketing” that continues to be a mainstay in the advertising industry.
Godin’s book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers, advocated this new marketing medium as an alternative to the time-honored and rather irritating habit of constantly interrupting whatever you’re watching, reading, or browsing with sales pitches.
Let’s clarify our words prior to discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each technique and how a database of individuals who have opted-in to receive information about your goods and services generates better leads.
What is the definition of “interruption marketing”?
Traditional marketing strategy is interruption marketing. It is used by marketers to offer goods and/or services to an audience that is currently focused on something else; thus the term “interruption.” Interruption marketing consists of television and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine advertisements, direct mail and catalogs, internet banners and interstitial adverts, social media promotions, email spam, and telemarketing messaging.
The objective of interruption marketing is to broadcast the advantages of a product or service to the public in the hopes of creating sufficient interest to persuade them to acquire the product or service. Especially for business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, which often employs emotional language to directly appeal to the customer, it may be highly powerful.
What is consent-based marketing?
Permission marketing takes a different strategy, allowing the target audience to select whether or not to receive promotional communications. It involves creating credibility before real marketing occurs.
According to 70 percent of customers, it is a superior method for obtaining promotions. In addition, they believe it inappropriate for marketers to send them anything without first obtaining consent. And given recent moves by Apple to prioritize user privacy and limit consumer tracking — not to mention Google’s plans to phase out third-party cookies by 2023 and the ongoing drumbeat of global privacy regulations — opt-in advertising is about to become not only a recommended strategy, but an absolute necessity.
Compared to wooing consumers, courting business-to-business (B2B) clients is more difficult, time-consuming, and costly. Purchasing business-to-business is more complicated since it involves many parties. Typically, a team of individuals makes a purchasing decision for their organization when purchasing a high-value (and high-dollar) product, service, or solution. In other words, much more is involved and much more is at risk. Permission-based or opt-in marketing often generates better leads and, ultimately, more revenues for B2B clients.
It is obvious why: Permission marketing’s capacity to deliver highly qualified leads is a big benefit. If a consumer opts to receive marketing communications, they are more likely to continue their customer journey. It’s that easy.
Permission marketing may assist startups in establishing themselves as experts in their sector and gaining the confidence of potential clients, but interruption marketing is ineffective for new enterprises.
How to Implement a Permission-Based Marketing Strategy
To be clear, we are not attempting to portray interruption marketing as the devil of advertising. It still has applications and may be quite useful in some circumstances. It’s simply a different model! Permission-based marketing may deliver better outcomes, more loyal consumers, and more sales chances if you want to adopt a strategy that is more instructive and enlightening and encourages prospects to pay more attention to your content.
Consider it from a different angle
Permission marketing resembles the sales prospecting procedure for “in-market” customers.
Undoubtedly, making a sale requires time and effort. But if you already have a database of highly qualified leads or customers on the market, the amount of time and effort required to make a sale is drastically decreased.
Once you’ve developed trustworthy connections with potential clients, it becomes easier to sell effectively to them. If potential buyers are already lined up, all you need to do is advise them appropriately, and presto, your chances of making a transaction will increase dramatically.
Develop better ties with current clientele
Consider the past as you go ahead. Recognizing and assessing existing customer connections is as as beneficial as establishing new ones.
If these ties continue to benefit your firm, you should bring them along. Ultimately, permission marketing is driven by its long-term commitment to all parties.
Names and email addresses should be collected
Learn as much as can about lead creation, demand generation, and how to generate more effective leads. Thus, you may develop a lead capture form that is compelling due to its consistency and dependability.
Include the form in high-traffic regions of the website. For example, the about and contact pages are ideal locations for lead generating forms.
Humanize, Familiarize, Provide sufficient Information
You cannot establish trust without establishing familiarity first. Permission marketing is tough to achieve success with if prospects do not know anything about you.
To eliminate this problem, populate your website with pertinent material, keeping in mind that your site’s content is a reflection of you and an extension of your company.
Tell your tale and capture your audience with your knowledge, objectives, strengths, and key points. Your website is the optimal platform for humanizing oneself prior to addressing an audience.
Create and cultivate new relationships
Developing and maintaining a customer base is a fundamental aspect of any marketing plan.
As you actually and metaphorically shake hands with prospective customers, concentrate on generating a lasting first impression; doing so offers a chance for additional connection.
A straightforward method for doing this is to give incentives to everyone who decides to engage.
For instance, if you are advertising a product, provide samples to prospective clients. And while marketing a service, provide a free trial.
Permission marketing, when executed well, may help your firm gain and maintain client interest.
Knowing the Prospective Customer
Before advertising items and/or services, permission marketing’s first phase involves requesting and receiving permission. Permission is essential to this marketing plan, but it is not the only one.
Permission marketing also considers what occurs after permission has been given. It is about establishing real connections and winning over prospects continually from that point forward.
Consequently, you should acquire pertinent information regarding your chances. Information such as their geographical location, preferences, etc.
Utilize this pool of information to develop customized content. According to study, ninety-nine percent of marketers feel that tailored content strengthens client connections.
Continue offering value
The marketing model might be unique. But it does not imply you should stop providing something constant: useful knowledge.
Though new and current customers are not receiving value from a firm, they will feel as if they have spent their time. As a consequence, people will lose interest in receiving promotional communications. In addition to this, they feel disheartened about continuing the commercial partnership.
To consistently give value, the goal is to justify a prospective customer’s choice to “opt-in” and make satisfying their demands easier.
For instance, say a company operates in the content marketing industry. In this situation, the value it may continue to provide includes pieces about the most recent trends in content production, methods for creating persuasive content marketing messaging, and up-to-date content marketing advice.
Constant Need for Adaptation
Changing a marketing plan may require significant effort, time, and effort. However, change may be beneficial. And changing from interruption marketing to permission-based marketing might be more advantageous.
Instead of resisting it, why not embrace it? And with an open mind, do what is necessary to approach success: adapt.
Call us if you need assistance moving your firm to a permission-based marketing approach, and we’ll get to work.
